Some thoughts after having watched Part One of Dune for the first time the other night. Mostly, it was well done...much superior to the 1984 version, and in most regards much better than the 2000 miniseries. Accolades and mostly nitpicks, in no particular order or rank...
1) While Jessica looks the part, she is too emotional. Less is more in that department. While it was clear she was Leto’s concubine, it did not make clear that she was also his executive secretary, intimately involved in all his decisions and actions.
2) Caladan should not look like northern Scotland...it should be tropical or semitropical. C’mon, their major export was RICE, after all...It should be light and airy, and the interior of Castle Caladan should be open, should be sunny and inviting, comfortable, with a scattering (but not more) of sentimental and decorative art and items, but not the gloomy dungeon they have made it. More like a Spanish or Italian castle or mansion...
3) Geidi Prime should be light, with bright and gaudy...even obscene...decorations, a place of abject poverty surmounted by ostentatious displays of wealth and oppressive high security. Again, it should not be the austere gloomy steampunk that it is. It should make a Roman bath look positively reserved...
4) The Baron should have a normal, even inviting baritone voice, not the guttural, hard to understand mash that it is. He should have more of a chubby baby face. He should dress in brightly-colored robes...COLOR, dammit! He’s a flaming gay man...think Harvey Fierstein. And don’t have him fly over the table...that’s just silly...
5) The Baron would never kill Dr. Yueh himself...that’s Piter’s job...The Baron must be able to face the Truthsayer and be able to say “I didn’t do it”…on any number of actions.
6) I suppose the Sardaukar are better than in the 1984 version, but...why can’t someone figure out how to make soldiers look like human beings and not mechanical robots inside spacesuits. And when they are on Salusa Secundus, or as the escort for the emperor’s envoy to Caladan, they should be dressed in their fancy, fopish dress uniforms...
7) Arrakis isn’t bad, although there should be more vistas with clear instead of dusty skies…None of the shots, I felt, really imparted the vast emptiness of the desert. Maybe they worked better in a theater...Think back to some of the vistas in Lawrence of Arabia. Even Star Wars managed a few good desert shots...or the vistas taken by the various Mars landers...
8) The castle on Arrakis, and indeed the facilities, should be brighter and more open, even inside. In the book, the Atreides take the Count Fenring’s estate...it should look more like Castle Caladan version I suggest above...even though he was there under the Harkonnens, he himself was not Harkonnen, and would have had a more refined, attractive home, more appropriate of a close cousin and confidant of the Emperor...not the Early Imperial nuclear bunker that it seems to be…
9) What the hell is it with whispered dialog...even things that aren’t supposed to be whispered?...to hear and understand most of it, I had to turn it up to 33 on my TV, when 20 is usually sufficient…and even then...And the distorted voices? Why must everything in visions sound like it’s been rasped through a synthesizer? Half of it I can’t understand, even if I back up and listen again…Some I could figure out because I’ve read the books...
10) The spaceships are bleh...although the heighliners make sense...and showing itty-bitty crowds of humans in establishing shots next to the big landing craft used to get to and from the planets’ surfaces is, well, silly...but the ornithopters absolutely rock! The shields actually seem to work and look the way they were written...not the horrible blocky early cgi of the 1984 version.
11) Most of the main characters were mostly very ably presented by actor and makeup and costume…Paul and Chani at least look like they might be in their middle/late teens. Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho was near perfection. Making Liet Kynes a woman, and casting Duncan-Brewster, was genius.
The exception is Gurney Halleck...Where the hell is his inkvine scar? It should be a very obvious wide purple welt across his face, a constant and loud reminder of the evil of the Harkonnens, and not a slight disfigurement only visible in some shots. His propensity for appropriate quotations and music should have been exploited more.
And Thufir Hawat ought to have bright red smudgy sapho lips, rather than just a tiny indistinct red dot...just saying…
One last one: Beast Rabban would not ever yell in the presence of his Uncle, the Baron...the good Baron might think his musclebrained nephew had become unstable and a threat to his person, and that someone else should be entrusted with governing Arrakis...
Thoughts, anyone? Gonna watch Part 2 tonight...
1) While Jessica looks the part, she is too emotional. Less is more in that department. While it was clear she was Leto’s concubine, it did not make clear that she was also his executive secretary, intimately involved in all his decisions and actions.
2) Caladan should not look like northern Scotland...it should be tropical or semitropical. C’mon, their major export was RICE, after all...It should be light and airy, and the interior of Castle Caladan should be open, should be sunny and inviting, comfortable, with a scattering (but not more) of sentimental and decorative art and items, but not the gloomy dungeon they have made it. More like a Spanish or Italian castle or mansion...
3) Geidi Prime should be light, with bright and gaudy...even obscene...decorations, a place of abject poverty surmounted by ostentatious displays of wealth and oppressive high security. Again, it should not be the austere gloomy steampunk that it is. It should make a Roman bath look positively reserved...
4) The Baron should have a normal, even inviting baritone voice, not the guttural, hard to understand mash that it is. He should have more of a chubby baby face. He should dress in brightly-colored robes...COLOR, dammit! He’s a flaming gay man...think Harvey Fierstein. And don’t have him fly over the table...that’s just silly...
5) The Baron would never kill Dr. Yueh himself...that’s Piter’s job...The Baron must be able to face the Truthsayer and be able to say “I didn’t do it”…on any number of actions.
6) I suppose the Sardaukar are better than in the 1984 version, but...why can’t someone figure out how to make soldiers look like human beings and not mechanical robots inside spacesuits. And when they are on Salusa Secundus, or as the escort for the emperor’s envoy to Caladan, they should be dressed in their fancy, fopish dress uniforms...
7) Arrakis isn’t bad, although there should be more vistas with clear instead of dusty skies…None of the shots, I felt, really imparted the vast emptiness of the desert. Maybe they worked better in a theater...Think back to some of the vistas in Lawrence of Arabia. Even Star Wars managed a few good desert shots...or the vistas taken by the various Mars landers...
8) The castle on Arrakis, and indeed the facilities, should be brighter and more open, even inside. In the book, the Atreides take the Count Fenring’s estate...it should look more like Castle Caladan version I suggest above...even though he was there under the Harkonnens, he himself was not Harkonnen, and would have had a more refined, attractive home, more appropriate of a close cousin and confidant of the Emperor...not the Early Imperial nuclear bunker that it seems to be…
9) What the hell is it with whispered dialog...even things that aren’t supposed to be whispered?...to hear and understand most of it, I had to turn it up to 33 on my TV, when 20 is usually sufficient…and even then...And the distorted voices? Why must everything in visions sound like it’s been rasped through a synthesizer? Half of it I can’t understand, even if I back up and listen again…Some I could figure out because I’ve read the books...
10) The spaceships are bleh...although the heighliners make sense...and showing itty-bitty crowds of humans in establishing shots next to the big landing craft used to get to and from the planets’ surfaces is, well, silly...but the ornithopters absolutely rock! The shields actually seem to work and look the way they were written...not the horrible blocky early cgi of the 1984 version.
11) Most of the main characters were mostly very ably presented by actor and makeup and costume…Paul and Chani at least look like they might be in their middle/late teens. Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho was near perfection. Making Liet Kynes a woman, and casting Duncan-Brewster, was genius.
The exception is Gurney Halleck...Where the hell is his inkvine scar? It should be a very obvious wide purple welt across his face, a constant and loud reminder of the evil of the Harkonnens, and not a slight disfigurement only visible in some shots. His propensity for appropriate quotations and music should have been exploited more.
And Thufir Hawat ought to have bright red smudgy sapho lips, rather than just a tiny indistinct red dot...just saying…
One last one: Beast Rabban would not ever yell in the presence of his Uncle, the Baron...the good Baron might think his musclebrained nephew had become unstable and a threat to his person, and that someone else should be entrusted with governing Arrakis...
Thoughts, anyone? Gonna watch Part 2 tonight...
